Peace Researcher 30 – March 2005
It’s not unique, but it’s certainly not often
that foreign spies are caught redhanded in New Zealand, let alone arrested,
imprisoned and deported. We are a long way away from the world’s major
battlefields. As former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, so pithily put
it: “New Zealand is a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica”. It has happened
before, primarily during the good old Cold War when there were various
incidents involving Soviet diplomats, up to the rank of Ambassador, usually
accused of being in cahoots with officials of the former pro-Soviet Socialist
Unity Party. None of those diplomats was ever charged with anything; as they
all held diplomatic immunity, they were simply told to leave the country. The
most famous “spy scandal” involving the Russians led to the infamous 1970s’ arrest,
trial and acquittal of famous NZ economist and high ranking public official,
the late Dr Bill Sutch. He was the only New Zealander ever prosecuted under the
espionage provisions of the former Official Secrets Act, and his case
represented one of the many nadirs in the half century of our glorious Security
Intelligence Service (SIS).
Cases involving foreign spies
from “friendly” countries are even more rare. It is a given that the US,
Britain and Australia have Intelligence officers operating here, usually under
diplomatic cover. But nothing has ever been done about them, even when there
have been demonstrable instances of meddling in NZ’s internal political
affairs, most notably by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Our
“friends” the French went too far with the 1985 fatal bombing, in Auckland
Harbour, of the Rainbow Warrior by
its agents. Routine Police work and the sheer nosiness of ordinary Kiwis led to
two of those agents being arrested, tried and imprisoned (and released in an
indecently short time, as a result of crude political pressure applied by
France). But that was the only previous occasion where foreign spies (not to
mention bombers and killers) have been actually prosecuted.
Until 2004.One of the sensations of
last year was the unmasking of an Israeli Intelligence operation in Auckland,
the arrest of two operatives of Mossad (that country’s external security
agency), followed by their conviction, imprisonment and deportation. The whole
scandal caused major outrage right across the NZ political spectrum; a
diplomatic breach with Israel that remains unresolved, at the time of writing;
and attracted media and political attention right around the world because of
the blatant nature of the operation and the serious implications for Israel’s
dealings with all other “friendly” nations.
The mainstream media is very good
at covering “humint” (human intelligence), as opposed to the much more
significant electronic variety operated at the likes of the Waihopai spybase.
So the facts of this Mossad case have been very extensively reported. To
briefly summarise: in March 2004, Police arrested two Israelis, Eli Cara and
Uriel Kelman, in the act of them collecting a fraudulently obtained New Zealand
passport (it was in the name of an NZ cerebral palsy sufferer who had certainly
not applied for a passport and was no position to ever travel). The passport
was sought, not for either of them, but for their ringleader, Zev Barkan, who
had been an Israeli diplomat in Europe for a number of years. Barkan fled the
country and has not been brought to justice. There was a fourth man also
involved (all classic spy rings always have a mysterious Fourth Man), whom
media inquiries identified as New Zealand citizen, Tony Reznik. He is a New
Zealand citizen who had lived for many years in Israel and who is believed to
have been the one responsible for selecting the disabled man for the identity
theft (Reznik worked as a St Johns Ambulance paramedic and would have come into
contact with the unknowing victim. Barkan also lived in a street near the
disabled man). Reznik, and his family, also hurriedly fled the country without
being brought to justice.
The online edition of Israeli newspaper
Haaretz quoted Israeli radio: “…The reports said Reznik was a religious Jew, a
member of Auckland's Jewish Council. Members of the Jewish community were
quoted as saying that he planned to return to live in Israel. According to the
report, Reznik had lived in Israel for 13 years and had served in the Israel
Defence Forces…If Reznik was indeed involved in the affair, he may have served
a part that the Mossad has been known to offer to Jews living outside Israel,
and which usually does not put the person providing the assistance at high
risk. However, ever since Jonathan Pollard * was arrested and jailed in the
United States in 1985 for being an Israeli spy, Mossad has minimised its
contacts with Jews living outside the country...” (www.haaretz.com, 27/7/04; “Report: New
Zealand citizen aided Israelis in passport affair”, Yossi Melman). * Jonathan Pollard was a US Navy
Intelligence analyst who was convicted of selling classified information to
Israel. He gave his motive as patriotism towards Israel. He was sentenced to
life imprisonment, for espionage, and remains in jail, despite a vigorous
campaign by Israel and his supporters in the US to have him pardoned.
Murder Inc.
The question remains – why would
Israeli Intelligence go to such lengths to secure, fraudulently, a New Zealand
passport? The answer is sinister in the extreme, because Mossad is not just any
old run of the mill spy agency, which simply spies on people. It specialises in
murdering them.
“Intelligence operations, by
definition, are always murky, opaque and hard to pin down, but one could be
forgiven for tracing a link between the July 15 (2004) conviction in New
Zealand of two alleged Mossad agents for trying to illegally obtain the
passport of a bed-ridden disabled man and the assassination of Hizbullah
official Ghaleb Awali in Beirut's southern suburbs last Monday, allegedly by
Israeli-run agents.
“Agents of the Mossad, Israel's
foreign intelligence service, regularly use foreign passports to mask their
identities, and New Zealand passports are prized because they are considered
‘door-openers’ due to New Zealand's reputation for neutrality, and do not
arouse suspicions, particularly in the Arab world. They provide visa-free
access to many countries, including the United States. A New Zealand passport
is also a ticket to British residency, which could provide a European Union
passport. These would be invaluable for Mossad agents hunting terrorist targets
around the world.
“The Mossad agents who tried to
assassinate Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman in September 1997
carried Canadian passports, as did the assassins of three Palestine Liberation
Organisation colonels in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1987. Three of the six Mossad
operatives who set up the assassination of senior PLO figures in Beirut by
Israeli commandos on April 13, 1973, used British passports to enter Lebanon.
The list is endless…One must assume two things: that the Mossad is making
similar efforts to obtain genuine passports from other countries because these
are more foolproof for undercover agents than forged passports, and that
Lebanon, which the Israelis and Americans believe is full of bad guys, is one
of the targets…The incident in New Zealand appears to be the latest in a long
string of high-profile botched operations by Mossad over the last few years,
indicating that (Mossad Director) General Meir Dagan, is still having to
wrestle with organisational problems and poor operational performance. But what
happened in Auckland should be ringing alarm bells in Lebanon and the Muslim
world” (Daily Star, 24/7/04; “’Mossad
fiasco’ in New Zealand should ring alarm bells”, Ed Blanche. The article
details that, of the various guerilla movements Israel is currently fighting,
it gives top priority to Hizbullah, which, after many years of war, drove it
out of Lebanon, in 2000, and now controls south Lebanon, confronting Israel at
its northern border).
These murders are not
journalistic speculation but documented fact. In some cases, they have caused
major international scandals. For instance, the above mentioned 1997 attempted
assassination of the Hamas political leader, in Jordan. It spectacularly
backfired for Israel, because it failed to kill their target (the method used
was poison) and the Mossad agents got caught in the act, leading to the furious
Jordanians (one of Israel’s very few friends in the Arab world) demanding that
the antidote be produced and the man’s life be saved, otherwise the Mossad
agents would be tried on a raft of very serious charges. Israel was forced to do just that, in order
to get its wouldbe murderers back. Not only that but it also had to release
from prison the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual
leader (they killed him in March 2004, with a missile, in a Gaza street. Israel
blithely murders its opponents openly and with impunity. But its proven
expertise with poison led many Palestinians and others to suspect an Israeli
hand in the November 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, a death which removed their
oldest internal foe, and led to his replacement by a “nice“ Palestinian whose
role has been decreed by Israel and the US as being to keep the Palestinian
people under control). And, directly relevant to the 2004 New Zealand case –
those wouldbe murderers entered Jordan, in 1997, using Canadian passports. This
led to a major diplomatic ruction with Canada, which demanded that Israel cease
using its passports – the Israeli government gave its commitment to refrain
from using Canadian passports for illegal purposes.
So, Israel has a track record for
abusing the friendship and trust of various Western countries, using their
passports for political murders. New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Phil Goff
“rejected Israel's explanation that the passport was intended for use in the
war against terrorism. ‘I can't justify the act’, he said, ‘among other things,
because the passport might have been used for an assassination in a third
country. ... We don't think this was an isolated act’” (Daily Star, ibid.).
Which brings us back to the two
hapless Israelis who were actually arrested and charged in Auckland. The first
point to stress is that this was not a brilliant coup by our ever vigilant
Intelligence services (no more than was the 1985 capture of two of the French
Intelligence agents who fatally bombed the Rainbow
Warrior). It wasn’t even sharp eyed cops who busted this spy ring. An
Internal Affairs officer became suspicious about the passport application when
he got a phone call from a man saying that he was the applicant, seeking to
hurry up the process. The fact that this “New Zealander” had a North American
accent struck the Internal Affairs officer as curious. Suspicions were
confirmed when a call to the “applicant’s” father revealed that his son has
cerebral palsy, and has never applied for a passport. From that moment, the
Police were informed and an elaborate trap was laid to catch the ring. The
applicant set up a complex collection process straight out of a spy movie,
which involved couriers, taxis, cellphones and several changes of delivery
address. The cops still managed to catch Cara and Kelman in the act of
collecting the passport.
They each faced three charges,
including one under a new law of participating in an organised crime group to
secure a false passport. They were remanded on bail and very obviously kept
under surveillance by both the Police and SIS agents (TV news delighted in
showing the watchers trying to stay inconspicuous). It was reliably reported
that their communications were bugged, most likely by the Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which is responsible for spying on
international communications. This apparently provided the proof that they were
Israeli agents. There were ramifications across the Tasman as well. Cara
claimed to run a travel agency in Australia, which he said was the reason he
had made numerous visits to NZ in recent years. Only problem was that nobody in
Australia could find a trace of any such agency. Shortly before he was arrested
in Auckland, Australian Police raided a Sydney house that he had used, but
turned up nothing, except evidence that it had been hurriedly vacated. The
pretty unconvincing cover stories by both men were further undermined by the
extraordinary lengths that Kelman (the younger of the two) went to hide his
identity during their several court appearances. He did a wonderful
impersonation of the Invisible Man, complete with balaclava and dark glasses.
By July 2004, they had obviously been
instructed by their controlling officers to take the rap and avoid the prospect
of an Israeli Intelligence operation being examined in open court. They both
pleaded guilty to the same single charge, the most serious one of trying to
obtain an NZ passport by fraud. They were remanded in custody and duly
sentenced to six months in prison (they could have got five years), plus the
judge ordered them to each make a $50,000 donation to the Cerebral Palsy
Association for their callous and cynical attempt to steal the identity of the
handicapped man. True to form, Kelman stood with his hand covering his face
throughout the entire sentencing hearing. They offered no explanation
(although, interestingly, they both appealed) and duly served the requisite
three months. In September 2004, when the time came for their deportation, they
were released from prison several hours earlier than the usual time, were taken
by Police to a back entrance of Auckland Airport and kept out of public view
until they were put on a plane, under Police escort.
Peace Researcher readers will need no telling that we are regularly
strongly critical of the Government on all matters to do with Intelligence. But
on this Mossad affair, we entirely support the Prime Minister, Helen Clark.
When Cara and Kelman were sentenced to prison,
in July 2004, she broke the official silence on the case that had been
deliberately kept in place until then, and well and truly put the boot into
Israel. “You do not expect your friends to do this to you…We look forward at
some point to the Israeli government swallowing its pride and offering the
explanation and apology we’ve asked for” (Press,
16/7/04; “Clark lambasts Israel; Diplomatic sanctions imposed after spies are
sent to prison”, Colin Espiner). New Zealand basically took every step short of
breaking diplomatic relations. Clark suspended high-level visits to and from
Israel; declined permission for Israel’s President, the Head of State, to visit
New Zealand; implemented visa restrictions on all Israeli government officials
visiting NZ; suspended Ministry of Foreign Affairs consultations with Israel;
and delayed indefinitely the appointment of a new Israeli Ambassador.
Because the case was so clearcut
and the criminals had been caught in the act, the Government’s measures were
supported by all political parties and the media. They remain in place to the
present, as Israel has not been forthcoming with any explanation or apology,
which vividly illustrates its arrogance. This represents a major public
relations embarrassment and diplomatic blow for Israel. Its’ local supporters
tried to make light of the whole incident, pointing out that New Zealand and
Israel have a very limited relationship anyway, with minimal trade between the two
(hence the major difference with the Rainbow
Warrior affair, where France openly used New Zealand’s vital agricultural
trade with Europe as a weapon to get its spies and bombers out of prison, and
back home to a heroes’ welcome). It has been suggested that the Labour
government’s harsh measures against Israel are further proof of its alleged
pro-Palestinian bias (in the recent past, Phil Goff, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, visited the Palestinian leader, the late Yasser Arafat, in his
besieged compound in Ramallah). Local Zionists even pulled out the old canard
that criticism of Israel is proof of anti-Semitism, and tried to directly link
the Government’s measures with the coincidental and despicable mass vandalism
of Jewish graves in Wellington. More reasoned commentators correctly stated
that this still unsolved crime bears all the hallmarks of the local neo-Nazi
lunatic fringe and has nothing to do with the exposure and punishment of an
Israeli spy ring.
The ramifications of this
international incident are still being played out. It was revealed, in February
2005, that Australia had asked Israel to withdraw a diplomat from its Canberra
Embassy. This had not been publicly announced and when the Australian media
exposed it, several weeks after the event, the Australian government refused to
comment. But the seriousness of this unusual move is underscored by the fact
that Australia and Israel are good friends. The unnamed diplomat had visited
Cara and Kelman when they were in prison in Auckland.
Green MP, Keith Locke, was the
only one to ask the obvious question. "’We need to know whether last
year's attempt by a Mossad agent to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports
was run out of Israel's Embassy in Canberra. The expelled diplomat was
cross-accredited to New Zealand and visited the two Mossad spies jailed here.
It is bad enough that Mossad was infringing on New Zealand's sovereignty and
laws. It is even worse if the Israeli diplomatic post responsible for New
Zealand was involved’. Keith said there was prima facie evidence the Mossad
operation against New Zealand was run out of Australia. ‘One of the jailed
spies, Eli Cara, was based near Sydney, running a dummy tourism agency. He
crossed the Tasman 24 times. In addition, the third Mossad agent, Zev Barkan,
who managed to escape New Zealand, had been an Israeli diplomat in Austria and
Belgium’. Keith said the New Zealand Government must not be caught up in an
Australian government cover-up of the affair. ‘As long as Israel's diplomats to
New Zealand are based in Australia, it is our business whether Mossad is
operating out of the Canberra Embassy. Phil Goff's talk about fighting
terrorism will be hollow if he doesn't try to get to the bottom of this, the only
terrorist-linked activity in New Zealand since the Rainbow Warrior bombing’” (press release, quoted in JustPeace 73, 10/2/05).
But things have obviously been
happening behind the scenes. In early 2005, Cara and Kelman withdrew their
appeals, which was followed, in February, by media and official speculation
that Israel was preparing to apologise to New Zealand. The timing was
significant, as this speculation was just before the visit of their President
to Australia, indicating that Israel saw the need to restore good relations
with both countries.
Israel has nothing to complain
about. The hard men who run Mossad (rather incompetently, it must be said)
would simply put this down as one of the costs of running an international
criminal organisation which routinely commits all manner of crimes, including
multiple murders, in foreign countries. Cara and Kelman were simply the
expendable foot soldiers (as were Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur in France’s
Rainbow Warrior operation). Likewise,
those two have nothing to complain about. They could have got five years – they
served three months. Compare that with the way Israel treats its own “spies”.
The most famous case is that of Mordechai Vanunu, the man who blew the whistle
on Israel’s nuclear arsenal. You can read about his case at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr29-102.html#whistle
(PR 29; June 2004; “Israeli Nuclear
Whistleblower Free: Mordechai Vanunu Unbowed, Defiant”, Murray Horton). He served a full 18 year prison sentence,
with not a day remitted; and most of that was in solitary confinement. He was
reluctantly released under stringent conditions, including not being allowed to
talk to the foreign media, or go abroad. He remains under constant surveillance
and harassment. In November 2004 he was re-arrested on suspicion of revealing
more classified information, and of violating his terms of release, namely by
defying the restrictions and doing high profile international media interviews.
“I cannot shut up, I must have freedom of speech” (Press, 13/11/04; “Vanunu denies spilling new secrets”, Reuters).
And Cara and Kelman have nothing to
complain about compared to New Zealand’s treatment of its most famous “guest”
from the Arab world, namely Ahmed Zaoui (see the article and book review
elsewhere in this issue). Held without charge or trial for more than two years,
most of it in solitary confinement in maximum security, he is now out on bail
but faces a battle, against implacable Government opposition, to be allowed to
live here as a refugee (which he has been officially recognised as, by the
authorised body) and not be deported as a “terrorist” back to a homeland,
Algeria, which has sentenced him to death in absentia. Compared to that, our
Israeli “guests” had a featherbed incarceration.
The fact remains that Israel was
caught in the act of committing an international crime (most likely to
facilitate the commission of a worse one elsewhere) and has deservedly been the
subject of widespread disgust, and appropriate punishment. The message – if
this is the way you behave in our country, then don’t come again. We have no
wish to be implicated, however indirectly and unwittingly, in the murderous
crimes you routinely commit.
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